Chapter 1: The Pedagogy and Politics of Global Citizenship in International Schools: Setting the Context

During the global economic boom that followed World War II, American and British families were deployed by their employers throughout the world on assignments for government, the United Nations, and various international agencies, foundations, and multinational corporations. With this came the establishment of American and British international schools.¹ To be sure, many other countries also established schools abroad for their expatriate citizens, but American and British international schools quickly gained prominence because of the emergence of English language as the world’s lingua franca, both within the culturally diverse societies such as India and across national borders. This has led to the ascendancy of the U.S. and U.K. school models on the international scene. Traditionally, these international schools have catered to children of privileged transnational elites, often referred to as “third culture kids” (Pollock & Van Reken, 1999), “global nomads” (McCaig, 1992), or “new diaspora of transculturalists” (Willis, Enloe, & Minoura, 1994). However, the impact of globalization has resulted in the rapid diversification of student bodies in the typical international school, which no longer caters exclusively to U.S. and U.K. nationals but rather encompasses more diverse (usually aspiring middle class) student populations from both national and international contexts.